Weekly Reflections

The life of the church demonstrates this priority of the individual. It sometimes seems to act more like a volunteer association of hobbyists. A kind of benevolent group who give some of their time to certain activities that they like or approve of. “We are the body of Christ” might mean we are a group which has Christ as its sponsor. It might mean no more than brand packaging.

It is as though the individual is the one with power, the one who makes choices, although as one blogger said recently, part of the issue is “the lifestyle realities that those in the second half [of life] face, such as caring for aging parents, grandchildren or a spouse; and increased travel or work responsibilities.” A  significant trend over the last 30 or 40 years is that “attenders” not only decide where to go to church, but also make decisions about how much they will be involved.

We who claim to be Christ’s church, Christ’s body, face a huge challenge. One that I personally think we will probably not meet. It is a challenge to give priority to Christ and his body instead of ourselves. And not in a superficial way that could be measured by merely attending church services (although that would be good), but by giving ourselves to our ministries of building his body (which is the serious side of this discussion).

Dale